Not wiping their feet or removing dirty shoes upon entering the home of the client. Never washing their hands. Not using clean latex gloves or using dirty latex gloves. Damaging the property of the patient and not reporting the damage to their employer. Padding the bills. Not even saying hello to the patient upon entering the home. Not say anything whenever they leave the patients home.
I think that you will find that overall we ARE seeing this, just as those who are hiring nanny help, garden help, construction help and etc. find that the fields are full of spotty work. As someone who worked with new hire RNs in my hospital position often enough I can tell you that even RNs in costly private hospitals come in all forms: there's the good, the bad and the ugly, to be sure.
I think, if you consider it, an agency is a business that is hiring on, at great expense to the clients, workers who cannot honestly be fully vetted. I do not know what follow-up your average agency does on workers. For instance, do they send out any follow-up headed "Tell us your experience with our ageny's caregiver help", asking clients to report their individual experiences. I would imagine, after a certain number of complaints they let the "bad" help go. But consider this:
1. Caregivers are notoriously poorly paid
2. Caregivers are dealing with notoriously difficult and demanding clients and families
3. In our current economy there are many more choices for the caregivers than staying in a poorly paid position with lots of complaints.
Welcome to our imperfect world.